There has been fewer and fewer NFL players finding themselves in off the field issues of late, despite incidents from Ray Rice, Greg Hardy, and Adrian Peterson grabbing national attention the past couple of years.
ProFootballTalk’s Mike Florio provides some numbers that show the improvement that has been shown off the field. This could be in large part thanks to the changes to the Personal Conduct Policy that Roger Goodell implemented back in 2007, as well as the negative attention from previous high-profile cases.
Florio details that while arrests are still happening, numbers are down, overall:
Arrests are still happening, but not with the same frequency — as indicated by a “days without an arrest” meter that often gets well into the 20s, 30, and 40s between incidents. The fact that the number currently sits at 26 in the break between the end of offseason programs and the opening of training camps shows that players who are left to their own devices are avoiding trouble better than they once did.
There have been nine players arrests since January 1. Last year, there were 13 in the first half of the year. Two years ago, there were 21. In 2013, the number was 29.
It’s not just an offseason phenomenon. At one point last season, more than two months passed between arrests of any of the roughly 2,000 players on rosters or practice squads.
Roger Goodell takes tons of criticism, and rightfully so. But at the very least, it’s good that there has been significant improvement on the one real thing he’s concentrated on since becoming the league’s commissioner back in 2006. It seems like it’s been a while since the days of the Cincinnati Bengals, Oakland Raiders, and Detroit Lions leading the league in arrests, which is something the league certainly does not want when it comes to an image of a team.
